The Science of Personalization: How to Engineer Happy Customers

If there's one defining lesson that stands above all the rest when it comes to customer interaction, it is this: customers love personalized service, and they're even willing to pay more for it.

But just how far does this effect go?

According to some interesting psychological research on the matter, absurdly far.

You'll even get a peak at a study that shows how personalization made the evil Rasputin seem like an "okay guy" to some people... and it only gets weirder from there!

Let's dig in...

How to Use Enhanced Personalization for More Sales

Despite what we might say out loud, as a whole, people are generally positive about themselves and because of this, they have a predisposition to be more favorable to things that "resemble" them in some way.

This explains the strange results of studies like this that show, statistically, there are more people named "Louis" in St. Louis and people named Denise and Dennis are more frequently dentists than other names.

It's a construct called Implicit Egotism, and it helps to explain a lot of the oddities when it comes to things like personal preference and ownership bias, such as why the things we own seem more valuable to us, even if someone else has the same thing.

A great way to do this is to create "customer profiles" of who these customers are, outlining their needs, pain points, and how your offering fills the gap.

Have an idea of who your ideal customers are? Here are a few tips on how you can implement that information into your sales & engagement strategy today...

1. Craft your brand image to appeal to ideal customers

It's no wonder that organizations like the AARP use the spokesmen (and women) that they do, right?

They are often well known celebrities in their 60's and up, because who would want to listen to a young person discuss the difficulties of preparing for retirement? Nobody, because it's not genuine and doesn't speak to the people who need the service.

An "explainer video" (something many tech startups use) isn't going to be very effective if you're selling hearing aids, but when you're selling trendy web software, it will be much more likely to connect with your audience.

Take a page from political campaigns: many candidates often run as the "no frills average Joe", despite having immense wealth and business experience: it's about showcasing the traits that appeal to customers, or in this case, voters.

2. Capture testimonials that speak to your ideal customer

Testimonials are a powerful form of social proof that have been proven to create interested and engaged customers, especially if it's their first encounter with your business.

One thing that many companies do wrong, however, is that they just utilize whatever testimonial they like the most.

What we've seen through this research, however, is that people like stuff that relates to them. Your testimonials should reflect this as well.

How?

Since you can't take individual traits into account for every customer (you can't share the same birthday with everyone!), you can utilize broad information on those ideal customers we mentioned above.

Do your products & services ideally sell to small business owners who aren't very technical? Look for comments that your customers had on your product's simplicity and how easy it was for them to get started.

Selling to a highly technical crowd in the hosting field? Find testimonials that emphasize the superlative features that you offer and why you'll ensure amazing uptime.

3. Get on their level

Over a 90-day period, we saw an open rate of 41% for our "Fancy" template, which looks more professional thanks to some additional formatting.

However, we saw a 62% open rate on our "Plain" template, which looks more personalized. That's over a 50% increase!

Why do you think this was the case?

The normal email got opened more because... it was normal! It looked like a personal message from someone, and thus the customer was more likely to take action.

Use the tools your customers use and be where they want you to be: I've discussed before how one key factor for improving your online service is knowing what channel your customers prefer.

Many companies that sell "sandbox" sorts of software (that allow for customization) create forums and communities for customers, because in that instance, connecting with other customers is actually an amazing way to do support and to get to know the product better.

On the other hand, customers buying antiques off of eBay are going to want an easy way to get a hold of you via email and NOTHING else... they don't need forums and live chat (and probably don't know how to use them).

Cater your tools and channels to your customers' needs at every turn, and they'll reward you with more business.

About the author: Gregory Ciotti is on the Growth team at Help Scout, the invisible help desk that helps you build a company your customers love with more human, more helpful customer support tools.